Why Are You Managing My Spirituality?

"For once, my place with God in solitude would be honored - not managed or directed or interpreted by a pastor or a Bible study leader or anyone else who thought they knew what I needed.

For once, I wasn't going to have to force myself into someone else's prefabricated plan for my spiritual enrichment. 

I was so glad we had been instructed not to talk, because this meant no one could intrude by asking me what was wrong or trying to "help."

- Ruth Barton. "Sacred Rhythms"

The Silent Blesser

"His (John of the Cross, Spanish mystic, in "The Ascent of Mount Carmel") fourth Council invites us to relativize ourselves by no longer giving into our natural instinct to seek to be the centre of attention. For John, we move toward maturity by striving to be a listener rather than the one seeking to be listened to, by striving to give our attention to others rather than seeking to be the centre of attention, and by striving to be the one who is blessing others rather than being the one seeking the blessing. "

- Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

The Unasked Question

"I confess I am quite put out of countenance by the example of the slave of Pupius Piso the orator. He, not wishing to be annoyed by their prating, ordered his slaves merely to answer his questions, and not say a word more. On one occasion wishing to pay honour to Clodius who was then in power, he ordered him to be invited to his house, and provided for him no doubt a sumptuous entertainment. At the time fixed all the guests were present except Clodius, for whom they waited, and the host frequently sent the slave who used to invite guests to see if he was coming, but when evening came, and he was now quite despaired of, he said to his slave, "Did you not invite him?" "Certainly," said the slave. "Why then has he not come?" said the master. "Because he declined," said the slave. "Why then did you not tell me of it at once?" said the master. "Because you never asked me," said the slave."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher. 

He Sang Differently

"The truth was that when they did see him, they didn't recognize him. 

He had changed.....
He talked less.
He loved God more.
He sang differently.
They had never heard those songs before.
Some were lovely beyond words......"

- Gene Edwards. A Tale Tale of Three Kings 

Happy to Pray?

Negro Spiritual 

"I went down in de valley to pray,
My soul got happy an’ I stayed all day."

A Church Shout is Mission

Negro Spiritual 

"I real’y do b’lieve widout a doubt,
Dat de church hab a mighty right to shout."

Too Mouthy

"Generally speaking, most of us are horrible at making space for other people to talk. . . not just kids either. I am talking about everybody. We are impatient and frenetic in our communication. I spend most of my time half-listening because I am preparing in my head what I am going to say next, waiting for the slightest pause so I can steal the conversation away."

Tony Kriz. Aloof 

I Don't See God Everywhere

"Throughout history Jesus -folk have been trying to close the gap between God's revealed abilities and desires and our actual daily experience."

- Tony Kriz.

God Doesnt Need A Space

" God does not fill space as a body fills it, in the sense that parts of him are in different parts of space, excluding other objects from them. Yet he is everywhere — totally present at every point of space — according to good theologians."

- C.S. Lewis. The Weight of Glory

No Holier?

"“Love one another, Fathers,” said Father Zossima, as far as Alyosha could remember afterwards. “Love God’s people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth…. And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognise that. Else he would have had no reason to come here. When he realises that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of our seclusion is attained."

- Fyodor Dostoevshy. The Brothers Karamazov. 

We Talk Too Much

“I’ve been teaching you so many years, and therefore I’ve been talking aloud so many years, that I’ve got into the habit of talking, and so much so that it’s almost more difficult for me to hold my tongue than to talk, even now, in spite of my weakness.."

- Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoevshy's, The Brothers Karamazov. 

A Healthy Soul Hears God.

"My mind was getting jaded (critical), because my soul was getting hungry."
-Roger MacPhee

"Without A healthy soul we will never obey,  because we will never hear the voice of God."
- Roger MacPhee

"Be still and know that I am God. 
Stillness is a prerequisite of hearing and knowing the will of God."
- Roger MacPhee

"The body shouts.
The soul whispers.
So it's easier to focus  on the body. "
- Roger MacFee

"We have many people showing examples of how to live. We also need examples of how to die."
-  Roger MacPhee

A Lifetime Of Talking Too Much

"I’m just loving shutting up. It’s honestly been simmering inside of me for quite a while. My entire life has been filled with too much talk. From myself as well as those around me. I’ve been noticing that most of us, when we talk, fill the air with… more air. "

~ Drew Marshall - Practicing silence one day a week for six months, then walked the 800km Camino De Santiago pilgrimage in silence starting on his 50th birthday.

www.Camnoconfessions.com

Life Lessons From Momma

LESSONS FROM MUMMA

"When it came to listening 

My mother taught me silence. 'If you are drowning their voice with yours

How will you hear them?'

She asked. 

• • •

"When it came to speaking 

She said,

'Do it with commitment

Every word you say is your own responsibility'   • • • 

"When it came to being 

She said,

'Be tender and tough at once.

You need to be vulnerable to live fully 

But tough enough to survive it all.' 

• • • 

"When it came to choosing 

She asked me to be thankful 

For the choices I had 

That she never had the privilege 

Of making."

- Rupi Kaur. "Lessons From Mumma" 

Too Mouthy For Silence?

I appreciate his words very much. We are too mouthy at times. Not enough stillness or silence. Yet, proclamation, stelling the story, sharing His wonders and deeds is core to our faith as well. 

I know what most will  say about the need to use our mind. Loo at his cautions below about exalting the mind. The transformed mind is not always the mind that is actually at work. 

It is not either or. Rather, it is both. 

"Presence is experienced in a participative way, outside the mind. The mind by nature is intent on judging, controlling, and analyzing instead of seeing, tasting, and loving. This is exactly why it cannot be present or live in the naked now. The Mind wants a job and loves to process things. The key to stopping this game is, quite simply, peace, silence, or stillness. I would even say that on the practical level, silence and God will be experienced simultaneously- and even as the same thing. And afterward, you will want to remain even more silent. The overly verbal religion of the last 500 years does not seem to understand this at all and tends to be afraid of any silence whatsoever. It cannot follow Jesus and go into the desert for forty days, where there is nothing to say, to prove, to think, or to defend. 
Although we all use the phrase peace of mind, there is really no such thing. When you are in your mind, you are never truly at peace, and when you are truly at peace, you are never in your mind........

Yes, the mind is necessary, but it can't do everything. 

Yes, the mind is receptive, but reason is not out only antenna. We also need our bodies, Our emotions, our hearts, our nose, our ears, our eyes, our taste, and our souls. 

Yes, the mind can achieve great things, but through Over Control, it can also limit what we can know. 

Yes, the mind can think great thoughts, and also bad and limiting ones. The mind can be a gift and a curse. 

Yes, the mind can tell left from right, but it cannot perceive invisible things such as love, eternity, fear, wholeness, mystery, or the Divine. 

Yes, the mind can discern consistency, logic, and fairness, but it seldom puts these into practice. 

Yes the mind and reason are necessary, but they must learn to distinguish between what lies Beyond its reach; the prerational and the transrational.

Yes, the mind is brilliant, but the more we observe it, the more we see it is also obsessive and repetitive. 

Yes, the Mind seeks the truth, but it can also create lies. 

Yes, the mind can connect us with others, but it can also keep us apart. 

Yes, the mind is very useful, but when it does not recognize its own finite Viewpoint, it is also useless. 

Yes, the mind can serve the world, but in fact it largely serves itself. 

Yes, the mind can make necessary distinctions, but it also divides in thought what is on divided in nature and in the concrete. 

Yes, the mind is needed, but we also need other ways of knowing or we will not know well, fully, or freely. 

Yes, the mind is good at thinking. But so much so that most humans, like the card, thing they are they're thinking. 

Yes, the Mind likes to think, but until it learns to listen to others, to the body, the heart, and all the senses, it also uses itself to block everything it does not like to do or to acknowledge. 

Yes, the mind is our friend, but when we are obsessive or compulsive, it can also be our most dangerous foe. 

Yes, the mine welcomes education, but it also needs to be on educated, to learn how much of what it "knows" is actually near conditioning and Prejudice.

As a result, the great religions of the world found methods to compartmentalize, but not eliminate, the over control of the thinking, rational mind, through practices such as prayer, meditation, or contemplation this was the "new mind," which allowed 

• 1. other parts of us to see 
• 2. other things to be seen, 
• 3. the rational mind to then be reintegrated, but now as a servant instead of the master.
  

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

We Meet The Whole World There

"Prayer and solitude are ways to listen to the voice that speaks to our heart, in the center of our being. One of the most amazing things is that if you enter deeper and deeper into that place, you not only meet God, but you meet the whole world there."
- Beloved: Henri Nouwen

Silence To Hear

...all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard...
Thomas Merton

Nothing To Shout?

"Others have not yet attained the mature concepts on which a shout of protest to the crowd must be based. Indeed, only a revolutionary has slogans on his lips that are crying to be uttered aloud; and would the uninvolved, peaceable average man come by such slogans? He simply does not know what to shout."

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago

Why So Silent?

"Even though my flanks had already lain on rotten straw beside the latrine bucket, my eyes had already beheld beaten-up and sleepless men, my ears had heard the truth, and my mouth had tasted prison gruel. So why did I keep silent? Why, in my last minute out in the open, did I not attempt to enlighten the hoodwinked crowd?

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago)

The Art Of Unsaying

"All saying must be balanced by unsaying, and knowing must be humbled by unknowing."

~ Richard Rohr. The Naked Now